Summit for families, educators: Increasing student engagement

The Ohio Family Engagement Leadership Summit will bring together families, teachers and administrators from around the state later this month to discuss strategies to strengthen partnerships in education.

The two-day, virtual event will be presented Sept. 18-19 by the Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center, a grant project of the college’s Center on Education and Training for Employment.

The summit will provide professional learning and networking opportunities for educators, families and community members, said Barbara Boone, director of the center.

“We’re going to be talking about engagement and learning about what both families and what schools can do,” she said.

The summit will include panel discussions and sessions on a range of topics, including:

• A panel will feature parents sharing what motivated them to step into leadership roles at their children’s schools and how their perspectives on education have evolved through deeper involvement. 
• How to strengthen partnerships among schools, families and communities to help students explore and plan for careers during the middle and high school years.
• A session about how schools can promote ongoing family engagement. Participants will learn how to move beyond traditional school events to empower families to have an active role and co-create solutions alongside schools. 

The summit will also include sessions on the role of generative artificial intelligence in education. Jasmine Hood Miller, director of family engagement and community partnerships at Common Sense Media, will deliver a keynote address on the topic.

“A big global conversation that’s going on with AI is does it help learning? Does it hinder learning?” Boone said. “We’re working with Common Sense Media to talk about AI. They’ve done some national studies with families and students, and they have always been in that space of helping families to navigate technology and media.”

Another panel will feature leaders from school districts around Ohio discussing how to engage families in improving student attendance.

The panel will be moderated by Susan Bodary, director of the Stay in the Game! Attendance Network. The Ohio-based organization was created through a partnership between the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, the Cleveland Browns Foundation and Harvard’s Proving Ground program.

“We’re partnering with Stay in the Game! and others for several sessions about attendance and how families and schools are working together to support that,” Boone said. “There will be lots of examples from different districts around Ohio to give people practical ideas for schools and for families.”

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District is one of the participants. Tracy Hill, executive director of the district’s Family and Community Engagement program, said participating in the summit the past several years has enabled district officials to tailor their approach to family engagement.

“You can … look at the ways that you communicate with families — thinking about families who might not be proficient on the computer or families who don’t speak English as their first language,” she said.

“We have to take that into account — that every family is unique and every family has something to contribute to the education of their child. It’s up to us as school districts to adopt strategies so that we can be a good fit for families and their students.”

The summit will also include a keynote address on the topic of student engagement by Rebecca Winthrop, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education. Winthrop will expound on concepts outlined in her book, “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.”

“In that book, she recognizes the research around what families do at home that supports their child’s engagement and learning, whether that’s learning outside of or in school,” Boone said. “We want engaging instruction, but families play such a critical role.”